Homeownership Guide

Home Care Tips and Tools: How to clean vinyl siding

Home Care Tips and Tools: How to pressure wash vinyl siding

Seasonal Upkeep

As seasons change, so does the maintenance required by your off-site built home. Keeping up with all the necessary maintenance that comes with the changing seasons can be a difficult, but this guide is going to break down some home maintenance tips by season.

Winter

Winter may be one of the most daunting seasons for homeowners, depending on where you live. The cold weather can bring unwanted burdens like winter gutter damage.

You can prevent these big issues by following these winter and cold weather home maintenance and safety tips:

• Don’t let your pipes freeze
• Unhook your garden hose
• Follow these HVAC tips to keep your home warm this winter
• Prevent slippery conditions on your outdoor walkways
• Stay up to date on the weather

Winter is also infamous for its vicious effect on your utilities bills. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Here are a few tips for making your home energy efficient this winter.

• Monitor your thermostat or use a smart thermostat
• Seal windows shut and keep doors closed
• Only heat the areas you use
• Use the sun to your advantage
• Lower your water heater temperature

Finally, once you’ve survived the dreaded winter and spring is in sight, inspect your home in order to assess any damage that may have been caused by the harsh weather.

__

Looking for more ways to save money and energy? Check out our Energy Smart Home Package

Spring

As spring approaches and our hands and homes are finally thawing out, we’ve all got one thing on our mind: spring cleaning and decluttering our home. It’s also a great time to think about making décor and design changes in your home. In fact, you can finally start to brighten up your master bathroom for spring and summer!

By the time our closets are cleaned and we’ve packed away our winter coats, it’s time to get our hands dirty in the garden! Even if it’s still a little chilly in your neck of the woods, you can still start to plan for spring and summer gardening.

If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with a warm and wet spring season, you can dive right into a few easy and cheap gardening projects!

Summer

Just when we start getting comfortable with mild weather, the summer heat starts rolling in. Like winter, this can be a time when our utility bills are stretched as we crank up the A.C. So, it’s important that you make your home energy efficient this summer.

One way to take it easy on your utility bill is to spend lots of time outside. If you can’t beat the heat, embrace it! Get your lawn ready for summer by doing these few things:

• Mow more
• Test your soil
• Buy the right grass
• Make drought resistance a priority
• Keep clover

By following these tips, you’ll have a sprinkler and fire-pit ready yard before you know it!

Spend some time creating an area where you can gather with friends and family for a cook-out, curl up with a book on a summer night or catch a few rays during the day. You can add a little ambiance and spruce up your patio or porch with some gorgeous lighting options.

Finally, with all the muddy paws and little feet running in and out all summer, you’re going to want make sure that you are maintaining your carpet.

Don’t let the dog days of summer get you down!

Fall

Just like summer time, getting your lawn ready for fall is also important! At the first sight of changing leaves, it may still be a little too soon to stop mowing, so you’ll want to keep up your mowing routine a little longer. You’ll also want to add in leaf raking to your regular yard work. This keeps debris from trapping moisture.

As the nights start getting cooler, your thermostat will have to adjust again and you’ll be looking for ways to save on your utility bill. Shutting off your ceiling fans when you aren’t at home, repairing leaks and replacing air filters are just a few ways to start paring down your utility bills as the temperature changes.

One of the more fun parts of fall (aside from bonfires and endless s’mores) is adjusting your décor based on the season.

You can add some fun, easy exterior fall décor to your Clayton Built® home or tackle a do it yourself project to dress up your patio for fall! Use natural influences and seasonal décor like hay bales, corn stalks and pumpkins to really spice up your home for the season.

If you’re not into seasonal décor as much, you can always spruce up your home by using the changing season to update your paint colors.

General Maintenance and Upkeep

Preventative Measures

The best way to prevent your off-site built home from needing major repairs is to keep up with its regular maintenance. By keeping up with and doing small things like knowing when to change the air filters, how to change the air filters properly and maintaining your hot water heater, you’re more likely to prevent large maintenance nightmares from popping up throughout your home.

There are a few important things to think about when it comes to maintaining your Clayton Built® home. Generally, you’ll want to master a few repair and maintenance tips like cleaning your floors properly and fixing a leaky faucet.

It’s also a good idea to know the location of important components to your home like your breaker box and water shutoff valves, that way if something happens like an electrical fire or a large leak, you’ll be prepared to locate your water shutoff or breaker box with minimal panic.

Another way to be a pro at caring for your Clayton Built® home is to really understand the features and functions of your home.

• Is your stove a gas or electric stove and how should you clean it?
• How many light fixtures are in your home and what kind of bulbs do you need to change them?
• Where are your smoke detectors and how often should you be changing the batteries?

Understanding these functionalities and maintaining them properly is a great place to start!

Home Care Tips and Tools: How to replace a wallboard

If a problem in your home occurs while your home is still under warranty, you can complete an off-site built home warranty request. If your home is no longer covered under warranty, feel free to reach out to your local home center. Our helpful staff will help you find an expert in your area.

Green Living

Sustainability and leaving the world better than we found it are two important principles here at Clayton. We believe that changing the world starts at home. That’s why we offer some great energy-saving features!

Here are a few easy ways to keep your home environmentally friendly and energy efficient:

• Use green cleaning products
• Homemade all-natural cleaners
• Recycle
• Switch to a smart thermostat
• Natural approaches to pest control
• Energy efficient household appliances

Home Care Tips and Tools: Thermostat summer tips to save energy

Home Care Tips and Tools: Thermostat winter tips to save energy

Designing and Decorating Your Clayton Built® Home

Your home is meant to be your sanctuary. One of the most important (and fun!) parts of homeownership is getting to customize and design your home to fit your needs and desires. From decorating to organization, these tips and tricks will help you make every room in your home a place you love to be!

Home Design and Décor

Decorating your Clayton Built® home can be a fun and easy way to really add your personality to your home. While some things like adding on to your off-site built home should be avoided or left to professionals, there are lots of great do it yourself ways to improve your home!

A fresh coat of paint is one way to really spice up a room. Typically, choosing light, neutral and clean colors allows for a much better resale value. Look for paint colors in shades of gray, beige or light blues and greens.

One thing that most decorators can agree on is that making your home look larger and using space wisely, especially in areas where space is limited, can really improve your home’s appearance and functionality. Plan your living room layout based on the size and shape of the space. One way to utilize space that is often forgotten is to decorate around your big-screen TV. This can potentially add storage space, and, at the very least, it can make a big impression visually by adding décor that fits your style and home.

A great way to make the design of your home feel cohesive is to find your home decorating style and stick with it throughout your house. From styling a beach house to decorating a farmhouse and everything in between, finding a style that works for you and sprinkling it throughout your home will make it feel seamless.

While decorating, or redecorating, your home might sound like a big, expensive undertaking, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. There are lots of ways to do it on a budget!

• Yard sales and estate sales for large furniture
• Recovering upholstered furniture and pillows
• Local thrift stores
• Think outside the box

The best part of decorating? It doesn’t have to be all at once. Take your time and find pieces and projects you really love! Creating a home takes time, effort and lots of hot glue!

__

Check Out These 7 Design Features You Won’t Forget

Organization

The key to creating a home you love is not only making it beautiful but making it functional as well. What good is a gorgeous, well-decorated home if you can’t find anything you’re looking for? Organizing is a great way to prevent that.

Designing and organizing a functional desk space is a great place to start. Having a place where you can sit down and get to work without being overwhelmed is so important! Getting organized doesn’t always scream “so much fun!” but it certainly doesn’t have to be boring! There are lots of ways to get creative with organizing.

Here is a great series of tips, tricks and organizational fixes for your home:

• Organize and Design Your Garage Space
• Storage Options to Organize Your Kitchen
• 5 Tips to Organize Your Laundry Room
• Bathroom Organization Tips
• Organizing Ideas for Your Closet

Decorating and Organizing by Room

One way to approach decorating and organizing is to take it one room at a time. This way, you can look at exactly what needs to be done and tackle it all at once. Then, you get the satisfaction of having a completed room before moving onto the next big project!

The Bathroom

The most important characteristic of a bathroom is that it needs to be functional. You’re probably not going to spend too much time just hanging out in your bathroom!

So first, you’ll want to make sure that you utilize the best storage options to organize your Clayton bathroom. Bathroom safety in your home is also essential. Keeping yourself and your kiddos safe from slips and falls should be a priority when thinking about how you want your bathroom to look and work.

After you get all the functional parts taken care of, then comes the fun part: decorating! Here are a few tips for designing a bathroom that you love!

• Clean lines
• Bold decor
• Modern features
• The right lighting

Living Rooms + Dens

The living room is a space that you will want to put lots of thought into since it’s likely where you’ll be spending a lot of your time! Follow these guidelines to get started with designing your dream space:

• Think about the layout and make a plan: You’ll want to consider things like the shape and size of the room, what you’ll be using the room for (man cave anyone?) and the furniture you’ll need. Then sketch it out!
• Think about your budget: Again, decorating and organizing don’t have to break the bank.
• Do it yourself! Are you sensing a pattern here? Design and décor don’t have to cost tons of money. You can use things that you just have lying around and give them new life. Decorate with jars, fabric, frames and even books! The options are truly endless.

Bedrooms

The bedrooms are another space in your home where you’ll probably spend a pretty good amount of time. For that reason, you want your bedroom to feel like a calm, safe space. Here are a few ways to create the perfect bedroom oasis:

• Decorate for a cozy, comfy feel: Is there anything better than plopping down at night on a cozy bed, getting under a down comforter and snuggling in with lots of pillows?
• Choose colors that are calming for better sleep: Surprisingly, color has a lot to do with human psychology. Our brains are wired to feel certain emotions when we experience certain colors. Blues, grays and neutrals are among the colors that work best at getting you a good night’s sleep!
• Consider flex space: Looking for a way to have a home office or workout space in your home? You can turn a room in your house into a flex space.

Kitchen + Dining

We’ve all heard it said that the kitchen is the heart of the home. Any place where food is prepared and served is a place where people will gather and make memories. You’ll want to think about these things when designing your kitchen:

• Storage options: The kitchen is probably the room where you’ll need the most storage space. Pots, pans, plates, cups, food and more all need a home in the kitchen. So, finding the right storage is crucial!
• Kitchen table décor: This is another fun part of decorating your home. You can change your table décor out as little or as often as you’d like. Change it out for seasons and holidays or choose one neutral design to keep all year round!
• Simple improvements to customize your kitchen: By adding things like unique hardware to drawers, an interesting backsplash or great lighting, you can create a lot of depth and interest within your kitchen and dining space!

Designing a Child and Pet Friendly Home

Whether you’ve got human kiddos or fur babies or both, it’s important that you make your home an accommodating place for all of them!

Pets

Anyone who has a pet knows that they’re more than just a furry friend, they’re family! It may feel overwhelming to move your pet into a new home, but there are lots of ways to make smaller spaces work and features to make your pets feel right at home.

Kids

From designing a fun and functional place for your kids to play in the living room to pulling the plug and finally getting the bunk beds they’ve been begging for, there are lots of ways to really help your kids feel like they’ve got their own space within your home.

There will probably be lots of firsts in your home, as well. From first steps and birthday parties, to first days of school and learning to drive, your home will play a big role in the memories your child has, so it’s important to make it a place that works for all of you!

While it is important to make your children and pets feel comfortable in their home, it’s even more important to make sure they’re safe. Read more about home safety in the next section.

Safety Tips for Your Clayton Built® Home

One of the most important aspects of your home is safety. Keeping your home and those who live in it safe is a top priority for us at Clayton and should be for you as well.

Child Safety

From pulling up on furniture to dropping things in the toilet, little ones are always getting into something. It’s important to childproof your home and have safety precautions in place to keep them safe.

Pet Safety

Just like our human babies, it’s important to keep our fur babies safe as well! We’ve got you covered from available pet features to completely pet-proofing your home.

__

Use This Pet Proofing Checklist

Emergency Preparedness

Another important part of home safety is one that we don’t always like to think about: disaster and emergency preparedness. From natural disasters to fires and electrical damage, there are lots of things to think about regarding safety as a homeowner.

Natural Disasters

Depending on your location, weather can play a big role in the safety of your home. One way to be prepared for natural disasters like tornados and hurricanes is to find out about your wind zone.

You might be asking, “What is a wind zone?" A wind zone is the rating of the amount of wind pressure a home must be built to withstand. For example, if you purchased a home to be placed in a zone III wind zone, you are in an area with the highest wind speeds and your home was built according to the HUD Code requirements for that wind zone.

No matter where your home is located, you’ll want to take appropriate precautions. Staying up to date on the weather, storing documents appropriately and purchasing adequate home insurance are important when preparing your home for disasters.

Fire Safety

Clayton Built® homes are built with safety in mind, and we want to work together with you to ensure that you’re safe in case of a fire. Here are a few things you can do for fire prevention and safety.

• Check your smoke detectors often and change the batteries annually or as often as the manufacturer suggest.
• Make a plan and run through it with your children and family members often.
• Prepare multiple first aid and emergency kits in a few places inside and outside your home. (i.e. in your car)
• Discuss a designated area to meet when evacuating your home.
• Always be sure to shut off heaters and stoves and blow out candles before going to bed.

Be Ready With This Disaster Preparedness Checklist

Homeownership is a big adventure and responsibility, and at Clayton we want to make it as easy for you as possible. We know that being a homeowner is different for everyone. Your location, style, family size, needs, wants and dreams all go into creating the perfect home for you and your family. And we are committed to being there every step of the way, from deciding on a home to moving in and beyond.

The Clayton Home Care Guide is a compilation of some of our best tips and tricks from the manufacturers and brands behind every Clayton Built® home. Get yours now!

Home Care Guide